About the Investment & Research Opportunity
We’re looking for a talented new team member to join our Investment and Research team. The intended hire is at the Vice President or Principal level, depending on level of experience, with a focus on Crypto, Web3 and FinTech. In this role, you will work closely with the firm’s General Partners to source, evaluate, and invest in competitive early-stage startups. Individuals will join a team that is focused on elevating the standard of excellence and rigor in early stage sourcing, due diligence, and deal execution. The hire will lead due diligence, advocate for investments, lead investments, and join portfolio boards, while simultaneously building personal relationships and thought leadership in the tech community. The hire will also work with the firm’s Engineering team to use and build innovative software tools to evolve how we work to win competitive investments and support portfolio companies.
By contributing to the firm’s constantly increasing standard of excellence, quality of work, and investment returns, our team members are positioned to grow with us and become senior leaders in the organization and venture capital industry. We work best with people who are collaborative, versatile, curious, hard-working and always ready to pitch in.
Sourcing/Operations responsibilities may include (but not limited to):
- Investment Strategy: Help build and expand the firm’s investment strategy within Crypto, Web3 and FinTech, enabling us to build out a leading practice over multiple years that enables us to source, win, and add value to billion-dollar companies. Identify the technology market waves that will be driving the growth of these companies and enable the firm to invest in the best companies riding these waves. Help the I&R team to build and expand investment frameworks to evaluate and select the highest-potential companies in these categories.
- Team Building: Help the I&R team to build a world-class crypto/web3 and FinTech investing practice, with prioritization on helping to add additional individuals who can help to source and win companies that can reach billion-dollar scale. Help the firm add current operators and founders with deep experience to our Venture Partner program.
- Investment Sourcing, Evaluation, and Winning: Investment pipeline management and vetting for highest priority investments, organize sourcing and screening efforts, work on high priority due diligence, and use our proprietary technology and networks to source high quality investments. Work with the General Partners to negotiate, structure, and win investments.
- Relationship building: Deepen relationships with top seed and early stage investors, founders, accelerators, portfolio companies, universities and other VC’s that can help us source billion-dollar companies.
- Corporate Development: Work closely with high-growth portfolio company management teams (i.e. leaders of companies that have reached $50 million - $100 million+ in revenue) to assess re-investment opportunities or exit opportunities by engaging with Corporate Development leaders from large tech companies and tech bankers who orchestrate M&As and IPOs.
- 645 Thought Leadership: Assist in the ideation, design, execution and promotion of 645 authored content, for self-publishing on our site as well as securing contributor placements in media publications.
Skills and Experience Requirements:
- Deep understanding and knowledge of the Crypto, Web3 and/or Fintech categories, having developed a prepared mind through prior experience.
- At least 3-5+ years of experience in Venture Capital, Startup, or Angel investing. Priority placed on individuals who have played an important role in founding, building, or investing in Crypto, Web3 or Fintech companies that have reached large scale and exits. Roles would include founder, early team member, angel investor, or venture investor in one or more of these companies.
- Ability to help 645 develop proprietary investment frameworks and theses to enable the firm to source, evaluate, and win investments in category defining companies.
- If previously worked in Venture Capital, demonstrated ability to source high-quality investments that have exited or attracted competitive follow-on funding.
- Network in the crypto or startup community including exceptional founders, venture capitalists, and access to elite sources of deal flow that have produced exits in the $500 million - $1 billion + range.
- Ability to perform venture capital valuation, income statement analysis, underlying unit economics analysis, total addressable market analysis, and develop research on markets that may not exist.
- If not previously a full-time venture investor, ability to translate technical and operational skills to strong investment acumen over the long term, specifically in categories listed above.
- Strong understanding of venture capital deal terms.
- Very strong written, communication, and public speaking skills as the role will require both written and verbal communication to the firm’s stakeholders.
- Excellent ability to listen, understand, connect and build strong relationships
- Time management and team coordination, and strong ability to multitask.
About 645 Ventures
At 645 Ventures, we help founders bring the invisible to life. Every day we wake up and work to cultivate exceptional people, stories, and companies that are changing the way we view and experience the world. We achieve this purpose with over $400 million of assets under management (AUM) and deep institutional support. We’re eight years old, growing fast and backed by leading institutional investors, including the world's best university endowments, funds of funds, and pension funds. We’ve also built and activated a Connected Network of individual LPs who are industry leading business people and have influenced outcomes for our portfolio companies. Our network has grown over three funds in eight years, and successfully supports our portfolio companies through customer acquisition, strategic partnerships, board placements, and company acquisitions.
We have over 49 active companies in our portfolio that we’ve backed at the Seed or Series A stages. We invest between $1 million - $10 million as lead investors or members of syndicates of other top tier funds. Several of our portfolio companies have scaled to hundreds of millions in revenues, have become unicorns by exceeding $1 billion in post-money valuations, and have exited through IPO and M&A. Our companies span enterprise SaaS, infrastructure software, and consumer technology. Our goal is to back founders who aspire to build iconic businesses that transform industries and reach large scale M&A and IPO events. We are proud to have several companies already on that path including FiscalNote (IPO: NOTE), Goldbelly, Iterable, Overtime, Resident, Eden Health and Solidus Labs.
We have built a growing team and culture that is inclusive, collaborative, and which prioritizes a client-service mindset. 645 is deeply committed to diversity, equity and inclusion—and our team and community reflect that commitment. We’re proud to lead by example in the venture capital community while nonetheless striving to do better ourselves.
How to apply
Please fill out this brief application form on Airtable:
We’ll follow up shortly with the next steps in the process!